


Salt and Water

by EmLeeKoe



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Aftermath of battle, Bathing/Washing, Best Friends, Blood, Blood and Injury, Brothers, Caretaking, Crying, Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Love, Memories, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shock, Sobbing, Tears, Trembling, Whump, shaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23366959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmLeeKoe/pseuds/EmLeeKoe
Summary: Set directly after the arena battle where Brendan is killed by Zara Cole. Jess is in shock and Thomas takes care of him, then Wolfe takes care of Thomas.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Salt and Water

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to post this until tomorrow, but I was updating the draft and accidentally clicked "post" instead of "save draft," so here we are. XD
> 
> ‘He could still feel the sticky blood on his hands, even though he knew they were clean; he’d washed Brendan’s blood away. No, he hadn’t. Thomas had brought a bowl of water and washed that gore away. He hadn’t done anything for himself, hadn’t been able to. His friends had helped him here, into a strange house and a strange bed. He knew he should be grateful for that, but right now all he felt was empty and deeply wrong. This was a world he didn’t know, one in which he was the only surviving Brightwell son—half a twin.’  
> —From Sword and Pen by Rachel Caine

The battle was over. Somehow, not without great cost, they’d managed to secure this small victory, but Thomas knew there would be more fighting to come.

He stood, shaky with adrenaline, and gazed all around the arena, at the fallen automata, the fallen weapons, the fallen people. His eyes were drawn to the splashes, puddles, and pools of red no matter how hard he tried not to look at them, and he felt his stomach tying itself in knots. Some of those people had fallen at his hands, and though they’d been trying to hurt his friends, trying to hurt him, he had to fight not to let his sorrow for needless lives lost turn into disgust with himself. It was no easy feat.

He looked around and, one by one, picked out his friends among the people scattered around the arena. There was Glain, hurt but standing tall and strong as always, looking right at home covered in the blood and muck of battle as a Medica examined her. He caught sight of Khalila, standing beside a giant lion automaton she’d switched off, speaking to two of the Obscurists who’d come to their aid. Santi’s arm was over Wolf’s shoulders as Wolf led him off somewhere, presumably toward a Medica. Dario looked a little worse for wear but stood upright, one hand over his mouth, near Morgan, who knelt beside—

“ _Mein Gott_ ,” he whispered, and ran toward Jess—or tried, anyway; it ended up being a kind of quick limp, but he barely felt the pain of his twisted ankle as he approached and thudded to his knees before Jess.

He was almost as still as his brother, who lay in his arms; Thomas didn’t see a wound, but Brendan’s eyes were open and unfocused, unseeing, and his chest didn’t rise. A pool of blood spread slowly from beneath him, soaking Jess’s knees as he knelt, frozen, staring down at his brother. Brendan’s limp hand lay in the puddle of crimson, and Thomas had an irrational urge to nudge Brendan and let him know so he could clean himself. His stomach clenched at the wrongness of it all.

“Jess,” said Thomas softly, and then he couldn’t think of what else to say.

His friend didn’t respond, just kept staring at his brother; he wasn’t sobbing or screaming, cursing or weeping, shouting or damning his brother’s killer to hell. He was just… _broken_. A tear fell from one eye, cutting a trail through the sweat and grime on his cheek until it reached his chin; the crystal drop lingered for a moment, reflecting the light, then fell, unheeded, to his brother’s chest.

The world kept turning around them, but the group was frozen in time, trapped in this horrible moment, and it seemed they would never escape. Khalila made a speech, her voice amplified somehow, but Thomas didn’t absorb her words. More Medica were fetched for the wounded, and slowly, the other bodies were cleared away, the broken automaton birds gathered into a glittering, metallic pile of daggerlike beaks and razor-sharp wings.

Still, Jess didn’t move; he knelt, clutching Brendan to his chest, silent tears pouring from his eyes as he stared at something that wasn’t there.

“Jess,” said Morgan quietly, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Jess, I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t react, didn’t even flinch at the contact.

Wolfe knelt before him then, and in a voice more tender than any of them could have expected of him, said “Jess, you need to let Brendan go. They will take good care of him.”

It was then that Thomas realized there were Medica interns standing by, one holding a stretcher, the other carrying a thin, white sheet. Waiting to take the body.

Jess didn’t seem to notice that anyone had spoken.

“Thomas,” Wolfe said, “get behind him.”

“Why?” asked Thomas, confused but standing anyway; Wolfe was not one to be disobeyed.

“For no reason, I hope,” Wolfe replied cryptically, and as Thomas limped around behind Jess, standing so close he could feel the heat from Jess’s back on his shins, Wolfe nodded to the Medica.

They laid the stretcher in front of Jess, ready to accept Brendan’s body and bear his weight back to wherever the dead bodies went to be prepared for their funeral rites. Not until they knelt, one at Brendan’s head and the other at his feet, did Jess show any sign that he noticed any of it. He flinched, and his muscles tensed.

One Medica worked his hands under Brendan’s armpits while the other took him by the knees, and in one swift movement, they pulled him from Jess’s arms.

Jess began to breathe harder, and when the stretcher was lifted, he sprang to his feet with the suddenness of an automaton lion pouncing.

“No!” he screamed, and it was a hoarse, ragged thing that sounded nothing like the Jess Thomas knew; it echoed off the walls of the arena and seemed to gather, heavy and cold, in Thomas’s chest.

This, he realized, was why Wolfe had instructed him to move behind his friend. He grabbed Jess around the chest with both arms, and it was a mark of how distraught Jess was that he didn’t fight his way free; Thomas was strong, yes, but Jess was a wiry, intelligent fighter and could have worked his way out of Thomas’s grasp if he were thinking straight.

But he wasn’t; he was still screaming, reaching for his brother, trying to run, cursing the Medica for taking him away. Thomas’s ears began to ring from the sheer volume, and when he blinked, his own tears overflowed.

Jess kept screaming and pulling away until the Medica disappeared, and then his knees buckled, and Thomas sank to the ground with him, still holding him upright as he broke open.

“I’m sorry, son,” Wolfe said, and brushed Jess’s hair gently back from his face; even as he watched it happen, Thomas wasn’t sure it was real. Just by performing such a gentle gesture, Wolfe had unequivocally proven he was more of a father to Jess than Callum Brightwell had ever been.

Jess didn’t respond; he couldn’t. He was sobbing so hard Thomas thought he would vomit. His lungs pushed against Thomas’s forearms as he sucked in breath after breath.

Finally, suddenly, it stopped, and Jess went limp in Thomas’s arms, leaning back against him; for a moment, Thomas thought he’d fainted, but though he trembled badly, he still held up his head.

Santi came back over to them from where the Medica had been looking after him. “Come on,” he said. “We need to get him out of here. I know a place we can rest.”

“Come on, Jess,” Thomas whispered, carefully unwinding his arms from around his friend.

He didn’t show any sign that he’d heard, or that he knew what was going on, and as Thomas moved to crouch beside him, he saw Jess’s reddened, heavy-lidded eyes staring, unfocused, at nothing, his lips parted slightly, and he swayed just a little as he knelt in the blood-soaked dirt. He was covered in it, Thomas saw now; his brown pants and the hem of his shirt were soaked dark, his hands and arms streaked and slicked with it, and where his boots had scraped against the ground as he’d tried to go after the Medica, they’d left bloody prints.

Thomas took Jess’s arm and tried to pull him up, but Jess didn’t cooperate. He didn’t pull away or fight; he didn’t _anything_.

“Come on, Scrubber,” Dario said, crouching at Jess’s other side and taking his arm; he met Thomas’s gaze and nodded, then they both stood, hauling Jess up with them.

Thomas pulled Jess’s arm around his neck, even though he had to bend awkwardly so his shorter friend could reach, and Dario did the same on his other side; they followed Santi out of the arena, down the street, through an alley, and down another street. Jess walked robotically, as if from muscle memory, but Thomas had the impression that if they let go of him, stopped pulling him along, he’d just collapse to the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut.

By the time Santi stopped at the door of a large, immaculate townhouse, the sun was beginning to set, Thomas’s back was on fire from walking so far while bent awkwardly, and his twisted ankle was ready to give out. Hot knives stabbed into the joint with every step he took. He wondered briefly whose house they were invading, but it was a question he could ask later.

“Bring him upstairs,” Santi said when they’d stepped into the grand foyer and he’d shut and locked the door behind him. His tone was softer, kinder, than Thomas had ever heard it, and he started up the polished wooden staircase ahead of them.

“Come on, Jess, up the stairs,” Thomas said softly, but his friend didn’t seem to hear, or to know what was happening; he secured his grip on Jess’s arm and lifted him a bit higher, and Dario did the same, and they trudged up the steps, carrying most of Jess’s weight.

Santi led them to a bedroom with an attached washroom, then left, but not before standing in the doorway and examining them all with a critical, worried eye to ensure they would be alright.

“Thank you, Captain,” said Thomas as he and Dario lowered their friend onto a leather armchair in a corner; when they let go of him, his arms sank to the cushion, then, slowly, lifted into the same protective embrace in which he’d clutched his brother, even though there was nothing there to hold.

With a nod, Santi stepped out into the hall, and before he shut the door, Khalila could be heard weeping softly as she climbed the stairs.

Dario looked to Thomas. “Will you be alright with him?”

Thomas nodded and tried to smile, though he had no idea whether it was a success. “Go to her. Thank you for your help.”

Nodding, Dario took one last look at Jess, grasped his shoulder for a moment, then hurried to the door.

Thomas watched the door shut behind the Spaniard, and a shiver ran through him. He hated to be in a room with a closed door, even such an opulent room as this one. It felt too enclosed, too much like—

He shook his head, turning back to Jess. He couldn’t think about that right now.

“Jess,” he said gently, but Jess showed no sign of having heard him.

Sighing, he stood, stretched his aching back, and limped to a bureau against the far wall; inside, he found soft pajamas of a size that would reasonably fit Jess, and he laid them over the arm of the chair, then ducked into the washroom. There was a large decorative bowl on the vanity, full of fine soaps molded to look like flowers and butterflies; these he spilled out, and filled the bowl with hot water from the tap, then added some sweet-smelling bathing oil he found by the tub. He brought the bowl and a stack of soft, white towels back to Jess, then knelt on the floor in front of him, where he thought perhaps Jess’s unfocused, staring eyes would at least be pointed in his general direction.

“Oh, Jess,” he said, his heart cracking at the faraway, stricken look on his friend’s face. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Can you take off your pants?”

Jess didn’t move to do so, and he sighed; blushing despite everything, he undid Jess’s belt, then pulled him to his feet to slide the blood-soaked trousers down, leaving his underthings on. He helped Jess sit down again, pulled the pants from his ankles, and tossed them aside.

Unbuttoning his friend’s sweaty, bloodstained shirt, he peeled it off, then cast it aside, wet one of the smaller towels in the hot water, and took Jess’s right hand. Whenever he let go of Jess, his arms reverted back to the position they’d held Brendan’s body in; he pulled Jess’s arm straight and painstakingly scrubbed the blood and dirt from his skin. Even though he did it as gently as he could, the skin was red and angry by the time all the blood was gone. He scraped the dried blood out from under his friend’s nails with a nail file he’d found in the washroom, and then let go and began working on Jess’s left arm. The right curved gently back into the same protective position, and Thomas sighed heavily as he rubbed dried blood from his friend’s knuckles.

When that was finished, he laid a towel on the floor to soak up any excess water and scrubbed the blood and dirt from Jess’s legs; when that was done, he rose up on his knees and used the last clean washcloth to gently wash his friend’s blank, staring face.

The towels that had once been such a pure, snowy white were now streaked and soaked with dirt and blood; he piled all the dirty laundry in the corner and returned to the armchair.

“Alright, Jess, we’re going to get you dressed.” His friend’s skin was cool as he moved his unresisting limbs one at a time to get the pajamas on, first the pants, then the shirt.

In the bathroom, he found a hairbrush, and he returned to Jess to work the tangles out of his shaggy brown hair; it was past due for a cut, and badly in need of a shampoo, but it would have to wait.

A knock at the door startled Thomas, and he turned to see Morgan, carrying a tray.

“How is he?” she asked.

Thomas opened his mouth to answer, then found he couldn’t; he closed it and just shook his head.

Morgan’s eyes welled up, but she smiled gently as she set the tray on the bureau. “I’ve brought food and water for you both.” She came to kneel beside him and laid a gentle hand on Jess’s knee.

“How are you feeling?” asked Thomas.

She shook her head. “Not my best, but I’ll survive.” She looked exhausted and sickly, and he thought if he could get his hands on whoever had drugged her, he would snap them in half like a dry branch over his knee.

“You should rest,” he told her. “I’ll take care of Jess.”

She sighed, then nodded and blotted a tear from her eye with a sleeve pulled over her hand. “Alright.” Standing, she bent to lay a tender kiss on Jess’s forehead, then turned to leave. “I’ll take these,” she said, picking up the towels and clothing; to her credit, she barely even made a face at the soggy, bloodstained mess.

“Make sure you eat something,” she said from the doorway, and Thomas nodded at her, then clutched the arm of the chair as the door shut again, sending an anxious pang through him.

He stood and crossed to the bureau, filled a cup with water from the condensation-slicked pitcher, and brought it back to Jess.

“Drink,” he said. “You need it.”

He didn’t respond. Of course he didn’t respond.

Thomas held the cup to his friend’s lips and slowly tilted it back; Jess drank without seeming to know what he was doing, until the cold water was gone.

“I don’t suppose you could eat,” Thomas said, bringing the cup back to the bureau, and he noticed the sun had fully set, leaving only a faint orange glow in the furthest reaches of the sky. “I guess we should get you into bed, then. You’re in dire need of rest.”

He took his friend’s arms and pulled him to his feet, then led him to the large, soft bed and flung the covers back with his free hand, supporting Jess with the other. “Come on.” He guided Jess to sit on the bed, and when he didn’t lie down on his own, he lifted Jess’s legs up onto the mattress, then gently eased his friend onto the pillows and pulled the covers over him.

A Glow on a small table next to the bed lit the entire room; he put it out, so that the only light was from the silvery moon and stars, shining through the large window.

When he turned to go to the chair, where he planned to sit and keep watch, he heard a soft rustle of fabric and felt a hand grip his wrist. His mind flashed back to the prison, to the cuffs, but he gritted his teeth, forced himself back from that edge, and knelt on the floor beside the bed.

“Jess?” he asked, and Jess didn’t respond, but his eyes, reflecting the moonlight, were lucid for the first time since the battle, staring right into Thomas’s own. His grip was clawlike, and Thomas couldn’t have easily pulled away if he’d wanted to, but he managed to adjust so Jess was squeezing his hand instead of cutting off the circulation at his wrist.

“Oh, Jess,” said Thomas, and he bent forward to press his forehead against his friend’s as he shook. “Jess, I’m so sorry.” He reached for Jess’s shoulder with his spare hand and gripped it hard. “I’m here.”

He didn’t say anything, just lay there shaking. Thomas felt tears welling up in his own eyes, but held them back by sheer force of will.

By the time Jess’s grip slackened and his breathing evened out, Thomas’s legs had fallen asleep underneath him; he slipped his hand from Jess’s fingers, pulled the blanket up over his shoulder, and gently brushed his hair back from his sleeping face. Standing, he stumbled to the bureau on legs that itched and stung as if he were being pricked with a million needles and pins. He knew he should eat, but for once in his life, he wasn’t hungry, just queasy; supporting himself on the solid wooden chest with one hand, he used the other to pour and drink a glass of water, then forced down a few grapes and a bread roll before limping back to the chair. He collapsed into it and held his head in his hands, waiting for the pounding of his heart to slow.

Time passed, and Thomas’s eyes grew heavy; he found himself nodding off, and each time his head began to droop, he jerked awake with a gasp and clutched his chest, willing his pulse to calm. He was exhausted, but he was also in a strange place, and keeping watch over his best friend. He couldn’t fall asleep.

When the door opened, it jerked him out of a half-doze, and he breathed deeply, gripping the arms of the chair and squinting against the yellow light that spilled in from the hallway. The figure who entered was horribly familiar, and a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. They were going to take him again, to the round room, going to—

“You’re still awake, Schreiber?” Wolfe asked, stepping inside.

Wolfe. It was only Wolfe. Thomas dug his fingernails into his knees and inhaled deeply, then blew the breath out through pursed lips. His heart felt as if it would gallop right out of his chest.

Scholar Wolfe left the door open just a crack; he must have known firsthand how Thomas felt when doors were shut.

“Yes, sir.” Thomas sat up straighter, stifling a yawn, and rubbed his burning eyes.

“You should be sleeping. We need your mind at its best.” His tone seemed callous, uncaring, and it made something inside Thomas begin to boil.

Thomas shook his head. “Thank you, but I’m fine, sir. I’m not leaving Jess.”

“Schreiber, you haven’t even been checked by a Medica yet. Don’t think I didn’t notice you limping.”

“That can wait.”

“Nonsense.” Wolf reached for his elbow and pulled him up. “Come on, get out of here. Have you even eaten?”

Thomas yanked his arm from Wolfe’s grasp. “I’m not leaving him!” he said in a whispered version of a shout.

“Go eat and at least bind your ankle, Schreiber,” said Wolfe in the stern tone that no one dared to disobey. “That’s an order. Jess will be fine.”

“I’m not going anywhere!” He crossed his arms like a petulant child, and felt his eyes and nose stinging with the threat of tears. He wouldn’t leave his best friend alone with his darkness, even for an hour, like Thomas had been left with his own for three months.

“Get out!” Scholar Wolfe hissed. “Go and take care of yourself. That, Schreiber, is an order. Don’t make me call Santi to drag you out of here!”

“I was _alone!_ ” Thomas growled then, the words bursting from him of their own accord; it was all he could do to keep his voice quiet enough to not wake Jess. “I was all alone in a cell at the darkest point of my life! I’m not letting that happen to Jess!” His breaths sped up as he struggled to see what was right in front of him, rather than stone walls, iron shackles, and the face of the head torturer—Qualls had been the man’s name, he’d learned later. The man with the dark, evil eyes, the monster with the face that haunted his nightmares. He began to ache and itch and sting all over, as if his bruises were fresh again, as if his cuts were still bleeding, even though all he had left from his time in prison were scars, a heavy, persistent ache in his chest, and the haunting memories that jumped to the forefront of his mind, threatening to drown him, whenever he wasn’t wholly occupied with something else. And even, sometimes, when he was. He dug the nails of his right hand into his left arm, hard, and tried to remember how to breathe.

“Schreiber,” Wolfe said softly, gripping Thomas’s shoulders, pulling him back to the present. “I will stay with him. You have my word; he will not be alone.”

Thomas nodded, and suddenly he couldn’t hold back his tears any longer; he burst into sobs, for Jess, for Brendan, for everything and everyone, all the pain his friends had to endure, all the fear and hurt he still carried with him.

Then he found himself folded into Wolfe’s arms; he buried his face in the man’s shoulder and shook, clinging to him like a distraught child to his father even though Thomas was at least two inches taller.

“I know, Thomas,” said Wolfe, in that tender voice he’d used in the arena. “I know how it feels. It’s alright. You’re safe. We’re all safe.”

“No,” he said, and couldn’t get the words out to say that it wasn’t alright, they weren’t all safe, Brendan was dead, and that he was crying for Jess most of all.

“No,” Wolfe agreed, his deep voice a calming vibration in Thomas’s ear. “I suppose that’s not true.” Thomas felt him sigh, and then he pulled away to hold Thomas by the shoulders at arm’s length. “Go,” he commanded. “See a Medica, then eat something and find a place to sleep while you can. I’ll stand watch. I swear on my life, no harm will come to him while you rest. I won’t leave him for a second.” He sat on the chair Thomas had vacated, crossing one leg over the other and looking for all the world as if he’d just strolled in to have a nice sit-down.

Thomas nodded, then scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Yes sir,” he said, his voice less steady than he would have preferred.

When he exited, he left the door open an inch.

**Author's Note:**

> ‘”Awake, Brightwell? About time.” There was a rustle of cloth, and a dim, greenish Glow started to kindle, then brighten. The Glow lamp sat next to Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who looked like death, and also like he’d bite the head off the first person to say he looked tired; in short, his usual sunny disposition. “Dreams?”  
> “No,” Jess lied. He tried to slow down his still-pounding heart. “What are you doing here?”  
> “We drew lots as to who would be your nursemaid this evening and I lost.”
> 
> *****
> 
> “Up.” Wolfe’s voice was unexpectedly kind, warm. “I know how difficult that is, but there is no other way but onward.”’  
> —From Sword and Pen by Rachel Caine
> 
> -I listened to the first chapter of Sword and Pen, where Jess wakes up in some Scholar's house, and I'm pretty sure it's never stated whose house it actually is, but please correct me if I'm wrong!  
> -During the battle in Smoke and Iron, there's mention of Thomas's leg being stuck out at a broken angle, but that's never mentioned again, so I gave him a sprained ankle just for continuity's sake.


End file.
